Breakthrough 40 TB media sets new benchmark for AI-scale archiving, cyber resilience, and sustainable data growth.

The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, International Business Machines Corporation and Quantum Corporation, today announced specifications for a new generation of LTO® Ultrium® data cartridges with 40 TB native capacity (up to 100 TB compressed, assuming 2.5:1 compression), extending the industry’s most widely adopted open tape format for long-term, cyber-resilient, and energy-efficient data preservation. At the same time, the TPCs are optimizing the technology roadmap for future LTO products to better align with customer priorities regarding reliability, affordability and efficiency for managing colossal amounts of data.

As organizations generate and retain unprecedented volumes of data to power AI, analytics, data insight, and compliance, the 40 TB LTO-10 cartridge offers enterprises and other large-capacity users superior storage density to efficiently archive greater amounts of information. This leap in capacity is made possible by innovations in the LTO-10 drive head design and a new, highly stable base film material, which together unlock the increased native media capacity of 40 TB. This new 40TB cartridge is compatible with the same LTO-10 drive organizations are using for the 30 TB cartridge.

“AI has turned archives into strategic assets,” said Stephen Bacon, Vice President, Data Protection Solutions Product Management, HPE. “The new 40 TB LTO-10 cartridge will help enterprise-class organizations—across healthcare, financial services, media, research, manufacturing, the public sector and beyond—consolidate petabytes efficiently, strengthen cyber resiliency with true offline air-gapping, and keep long-term retention affordable and sustainable.”

Built for AI-Era Archives and Enterprise Scale The 40 TB LTO-10 cartridge achieves its breakthrough capacity by using an advanced base film technology known as Aramid. Aramid permits the manufacture of significantly thinner and smoother media, enabling longer tape lengths in a standard LTO Ultrium cartridge form factor. This material innovation provides an extra 10 TB of native capacity than the currently available 30 TB LTO-10 cartridge, which is manufactured using different materials.

Built for AI-Era Archives and Enterprise Scale

Once 40 TB LTO-10 cartridges are available, customers will be able to choose between the two different LTO-10 media types based upon their individual cost and capacity requirements, allowing for greater flexibility in media deployment. “Enterprises are moving from ad-hoc retention to intentional ‘archive architectures’ that serve AI, legal, and sustainability goals,” said Jon Brown, Senior Analyst at Omdia. “This new 40 TB LTO-10 capacity point advances that architecture: fewer cartridges, fewer frames, lower energy and a stronger security posture.”

Roadmap Optimization

In conjunction with the Aramid announcement, the TPCs are also optimizing the capacity roadmap for future generations of LTO technology, from Generation 11 through Generation 14. This will result in a new outlook for the projected capacities to be delivered in each generation, peaking with a 913 TB cartridge at Generation 14. The revised LTO roadmap is tightly aligned with anticipated storage requirements in the coming years and gives the technology space to grow should users require it. The new capacity points will prioritize reliability and compelling value in terms of cost per terabyte, and ensure everyday LTO Ultrium tape solutions will remain a practical and affordable storage choice for every type of business or workload. Meanwhile, the new maximum capacity of 913 TB for LTO-14 will reduce the time needed to store and recover data, while preserving exabyte-scale growth paths for tape libraries. The roadmap ensures LTO tape technology will remain the most reliable, affordable, and efficient way to archive AI-scale data for the next decade.

40 TB Cartridge Availability

Media qualification and interchange testing will begin directly after this announcement, with the expectation that 40 TB products will be available for shipment in the first calendar quarter of 2026. Buyers seeking LTO Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the LTO Ultrium format verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges. Storage and media manufacturers interested in licensing LTO formats may obtain information by contacting the LTO Program at www.lto.org/contact-us/. Organizations can evaluate multi-year Total Cost of Ownership and sustainability impacts using the LTO Ultrium TCO Tool and by consulting their preferred solution providers.